I walked into a local Department of Motor Vehicles office shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday. I was back in my car with a renewed license before the bottom of the hour.

SUSAN POAG / THE TIMES-PICAYUNECountry singer Sammy Kershaw loads food into passing vehicles during a food distribution Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at the First Baptist Church of Venice by Feed The Children. The organization partnered with Saints head Coach Sean Payton's Play It Forward Foundation and Kershaw's PROTECTOURCOASTLINE.ORG. Feed The Children distributed food at seven different sites throughout south Louisiana affected by the oil spill for the event. All families received a 25 pound box of food and a ten pound box of personal care items.

That's one of those remarkable occurrences you feel you've got to tell the whole world about. And, believe me, I did. Well, that small fraction of the world that I encountered the rest of that day.

It occurred to me later, though, that the amount of time I spent at the DMV wasn't nearly as significant as how I paid for my new ID. On the drive between my house and the DMV, I stopped at an ATM and withdrew two twenties.

Four years ago, I wasn't able to renew my license until I had first taken a jar of coins to Sav-a-Center. My checking account wasn't overdrawn, but neither was there enough there for me to visit an ATM. I had to scavenge for change before resorting to a coin-counting machine that swallowed up 8 cents of every dollar.

I was Katrina poor. I had a mortgage. I had rent. I had a car note, something I didn't have when floodwaters swallowed up my truck. I had no more savings. That week in September 2007 -- two years after the storm, five months before Road Home paid me and I paid off the mortgage -- was, financially speaking, my post-Katrina low point.

I kept quiet about my financial distress. I'm sure I could have gone to a friend and secured a $20 loan till that week's payday. After all, what's $20? But that was the irony. Needing an amount so small made me too embarrassed to ask for it.

"How I got over," the classic gospel recording proclaims, "How I got over. My soul looks back in wonder, how I got over." For those of us who are still here and still standing more than six years after Katrina, what better describes our sense of awe at having arrived at this point?

There's a humility in those lyrics. Songwriters Clara Ward and Dorothy Pearson and the many gospel artists who've performed the song -- this city's Mahalia Jackson included -- aren't crediting themselves for how far they've come. They are, instead, acknowledging that they had nothing to do with the progress they've made and that if it were left up to them, they may not have got over at all.

According to a recent report, the poverty rate in America is the highest it's been since 1993. There are, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million people in America living beneath the poverty line, the highest number in the 52 years the agency has been publishing those figures. That high number of poor people is scary in and of itself, but it's even scarier when one looks at it more closely. What's the definition of poverty? It's a family of four earning $22,314 a year.

Another report reveals that in Louisiana, many of our children are occasionally going without food. The Food Research and Action Center, a national anti-hunger group, found that New Orleans ranked eighth-highest among cities and Louisiana ranked seventh-highest among states for children suffering "food hardship."

Another group, Feeding America, reported that 18 percent of children in Louisiana are "food insecure." Their families either worried that their food would run out, bought food that ran out or they ate less than they otherwise would have so that their food wouldn't run out.

Gov. Bobby Jindal told an audience at the Tchefuncta Country Club Monday that Louisiana is doing well economically because it "chose to make tough choices" during his tenure. One of those choices made was the slashing of the state's budget for food pantries by 90 percent: from $5 million to $500,000. Before the cuts were announced in 2009, Louisiana food pantries had been serving 7 million meals a year. It's no wonder, then, that so many Louisianians reported being hungry in 2010.

The stress of Hurricane Katrina never put me beneath the poverty line. But living through those lean days made me aware of how easy it can be to fall into trouble, how terrifying it can be when you have to reach for your jar of nickels and dimes to take care of a necessary expense.